The second way of accessing files is AppleTalk but this protocol is used but rarely today. For today’s MacOS X you may prefer SMB, FTP or NFS. The exclusive backup tool Time Machine did not work with this NAS although ordinary network folders worked normally.

Next goes NFS which should be interesting for users of Linux and HD media players. For each resource you can specify one record like “access type – possible client addresses”. This is usually quite enough, especially as you can write any parameters via the console.

The above-mentioned Web File Manager is prominent here (you can turn it off if necessary, though). It can be used to work with the NAS’s files via a regular web-browser. Every operation is possible including the creation of folders and the copying/moving of files within the NAS. SSL ensures security if this feature is used over the Internet.

And the final way of working with the NAS, especially important for remote access via the Internet, is FTP. The integrated server offers flexible settings: encryption (SSL/TLS (Explicit)), choosing the main port, selecting ports for passive mode, limiting the total number of simultaneous connections and of connections from the same name, limiting the maximum speed of download/upload for a single connection. For convenient work with public FTP you can assign a special status “write only” to specific folders for full-access users.

The FTP server is very fast on the LAN: up to 70MBps for reading and up to 60MBps for writing. The NAS keeps an event log. Besides, you can enable a connection log that would show detailed information, particularly about FTP, including user names, client addresses, and names of files/folders. You can also view the list of current connections via Web, FTP, SMB.

The main log can be sent to a Syslog server. Email and SMS can be used for notifications. In the first case you can specify the sender’s account, a couple of recipients, a login and password for the SMTP server. SSL/TLS is supported. For SMS you need to use a special Internet notification service. QNAP suggests that you use (paid) Clickatell services but you can use other services as well. Two phones numbers can be specified here.

Besides logging, there are a few special pages where you can get some information about the system such as server name, date/time (can be synchronized via the Internet), firmware version, network addresses, status of services, CPU/memory usage, CPU/system/HDD temperature, fan speed.

So, the functionality of this NAS is very good. It supports all modern protocols, provides all the necessary setup options, and offers wide opportunities for building disk arrays and keeping logs.